Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

152 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMapproaches him nearly, and this is the more remarkablebecause it is a doctrine quite foreign to the naturalgenius and previous course of Greek philosophy. Thisis the attainment of knowledge by an immediate giftof the Godhead rather than by the natural exercise ofhuman faculties. Whence, he argues, could knowledgeof the Godhead come to us unless the Godheaditself communicated to us this its most proper possession,as it does all good. But if it rests upon acommunication of the Godhead, the less we mix in itof our own the more perfect it will be. The higherrevelation is a passivity of the soul, wherein it hasbecome an instrument of the Godhead. It is a stateof divine possession. The soul will never succeed, solong as it is encompassed with the body, in surrenderingitself pure and undisturbed to the higher operation.Therefore every revelation is to be considered as theresult of two movements, one natural and one divine,and in every one the divine operation is to be distinguishedfrom the human ingredients. Nevertheless,it still remains our task to repress, as much aspossible, all activity on our own part, and to bring tomeet the divine spirit an apprehension as far aspossible undisturbed and virginal.Once more. Philo, out of a mixture of Platonicand Stoic notions with his Jewish belief, constructedthe following theory as to the intermediate beingsbetween God and the world. When 2 God would makethe world, He knew that every work presupposes anintellectual archetype, and for this purpose He framedfirst the supersensuous world of ideas. The ideas1 From Zeller, v. 173, who refers to De Pyth, Orac. sec. 21-23 ;Amator, sec. 16 ; Defect. Orac. sec. 48 and 40.2 Zeller, v. 314, 315.